Industry opinion

• Decline of web craftsmanship

  27th June 2024

  I was thinking back to the old days of a time where I spent a great deal of time creating a design and building it with so much love and care, thinking of every detail and not being scared to try out new ideas. Everything was unique, it felt personal and was a labour of […]

• Using AI to improve designs

  29th July 2023

  First off, I never planned to write a blog post about AI but today I used it for something that improved my designs a lot. A few days back, I posted a link to a website that had hit social and was getting a lot of attention. I think it’s a lovely well considered bit […]

• Leadership vs Management

  22nd October 2022

  I was reading something on LinkedIn around Leadership and Management not being the same and something hit a chord with me. A couple of years ago I wrote about Leadership and what it meant to me. We did a course at work as a group and it fundamentally changed how I looked at others but […]

• Old dog, new tricks

  28th August 2022

  I’ve been a designer on and off over the last 20 years. Some roles were design heavy, some focused on development but I’ll always be a designer at heart. I started out like so many with a copy of Photoshop and Dreamweaver and for years would produce designs made up of layers, text and images, […]

• Quiet Quitting

  20th August 2022

  I recently saw a few articles talking about Quiet Quitting. From what I could gather it meant Quiet Quitting: A new term for the ancient art of slacking your way to a paycheck At first I saw it as a negative thing and my mind wandered to those I had worked with in the past […]

• eCommerce design not as easy as you think

  29th July 2022

  As a designer and developer, I always want to push forward new ideas and ways of thinking about design for the web and eCommerce. It’s often put to me that a lot of eCommerce stores look the same and could in essence be selling anything as is the nature of how it looks and more […]

• Stop doing these things

  19th March 2022

  First blog post of the new year and it’s almost April so my bad. Today I am writing about portfolios and CVs as I have spent the last few months going over so many as we look to expand our design team at the agency. Whilst going through them all, you start to see similar […]

• Ten years blogging

  18th February 2021

  It’s actually a bit longer than that but I only have the posts from 2011 onwards so we’ll say it’s ten years. Now my blog isn’t famous, it doesn’t get lots of hits but it’s a good reflection on how my career has gone over the past ten years and reminds me how far I […]

• The importance of prototyping

  22nd January 2021

  They say a picture tells 1000 words. Well a prototype answers over 1000 questions. I have prototyped for years whether the project needed it or not. Most if not all my work is done in CSS and HTML with a smattering of jQuery. Responsive web design has kind of forced it on to us in […]

• Youth Movement

  24th October 2020

  This week, the agency won the Big Commerce Partner of the Year award. This is an important award for us not only due to the difficult times we are in but the work that has gone into getting us there. For years, we have been a pure Magento agency but now we can say that […]

• Full circle

  26th February 2020

  Twenty years ago, I acquired a copy of some software that would change my life. Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Over the course of the next twenty years, my life has taken many twists and turns and my career has gone full circle. Photoshop remains as does Dreamweaver but how we go about what we do has […]

• Me, on a stage, in Colchester

  8th February 2020

  Put the date in the diary, I’m coming to Colchester. I am pleased, excited, over the moon to announce that I will be doing my first live web talk to the public on May 15th for Colchester Digital. An event that my good friend Dean Leigh has a hand in organising. Dean and I were […]

• A regular salary is NOT the death of self-development

  28th November 2019

  A regular salary is the death of self-development. Why learn new things, when you get paid regardless? Why put in effort, energy, and inspiration, when you're not rewarded for them? Why push the edge of what you can do, so long as the checks keep coming anyway? — John Arundel (@bitfield) November 28, 2019 The […]

• Line Length

  10th November 2019

  If like me you have looked at many a website over the years, you will have seen sites and often still do where you see large amounts of text that span the entire page width. The problem with this is that is often very hard for the user to read as it’s not legible. It […]

• CSS Grid

  27th October 2019

  If you haven’t noticed already, I’m a big fan of CSS Grid. It’s 100% has changed how I see and build websites these days. Of course, grids have been around for many many years so designing to a grid is nothing new but until recently, we’ve not had the tools to really utilise them to […]

• Anniversaries

  5th September 2019

  This week marks my 4th year at Space48 but also my 9th year as owner of Little Black Cloud my freelance business that I started way back in the day. Of course these days, nothing happens via LBC but I’ve kept it going in honour. Freelance It’s mad looking back 9 years ago and what […]

• It’s a 5 minute change

  27th August 2019

  How often have you heard that? It’s only 5 minutes, it won’t take you that long to fix. Well it depends on the fix. Usually text amends or some styling only takes 5 minutes to do according to some whereas in reality, certainly at an agency, it’s a longer timescale mainly due to processes we […]

• Be less boring

  5th August 2019

  I work with a lot of web pages. Some big, some little. It is mainly eCommerce pages like Products and Listings but occasionally I get to have a play with content management system (CMS for short) pages. Your standard eCommerce pages don’t really need to change too much in terms of layout as they tend […]

• Designing in t’browser

  26th July 2019

  Its a topic that has probably been done to death. Are PSDs dead, is designing in the browser the way to go or is there some middle ground to getting the job done. Over the last 18 or so years that I’ve been doing this job, I’ve flipped opinion quite a bit the more I […]

• Communication is everything

  7th June 2019

  So I’ve started off with a wanky title, the kind of headline you see on LinkedIn. So this needs to be a good read. So no pressure. I turned 40 last October, I know, I don’t look it. The lowest age someone has guessed is 32 so I will take that. As part of turning […]

• I want to blog more

  6th January 2019

  I decided in the New Year to revisit writing the blog as once upon a time, I really used to enjoy writing about what I do and what I wanted to do and as part of that was to look back at old posts and see how things have gone in the years since. In […]

• The Good Old Days

  28th November 2018

  If you are of a certain age, you’ll know the struggle of the early days with table layouts and awful browsers. However things were a bit easier as there was no responsive and certainly no debates about CSS in JS. Ah great days. I started out as a web designer and my focus was very […]

• The state of frontend development and where will it end

  16th August 2018

  "Hello, what do you do Dan?" "I'm a front-end developer" "What's that?" "I don't know anymore." I've had that conversation a few times over the past couple of years or so. I tend to just say that I make websites look pretty or that I do the colouring in and people accept that and we […]

• 40 year old developer

  25th May 2018

  I turn 40 in a few months. I’m not happy about it if truth be told. I still see myself as a 20’ish lad just finding his feet in life yet here I am, mid life crisis well in motion and more wrinkles than copies of .Net magazine. I work in an industry that I […]

• A face lift

  27th April 2018

  It’s a common joke amongst those close to me that I like to change this site more often than my underwear. But anyway I’ve not posted in such a long time and thought I should say hello once again after the 55th redesign. It might be more or less than that. Who’s to say. As […]

• Website Optimisation Tip : Typekit

  30th May 2017

  I recently did an overhaul of the website and one of the issues I was getting from Google Page Insights was that I needed to prioritise visible content. Which was confusing as I could see a lot of the content (in this case, a blog post). So I set about trying to find out what […]

• Me, Myself and Magento

  18th July 2016

  I’ve been working with Magento now for the best part of 11 months or to some, nearly a year. I was under no illusion it would be a tough move from working with WordPress and brochure sites to full on e-commerce websites but even now, I have to admit, the effort required with an e-commerce […]

• Talking helps

  1st July 2016

  I don’t write technical posts. I try to pass on thought and opinion in the hope that someone takes something from them. And this one is no different. We work in an age now where we have tools for this and tools for that. We’ve automated a lot of what we do and have a […]

• MageTitans 2015

  9th November 2015

  This weekend just gone, I found myself breaking my no conference rule as I visited Manchester for the MageTitans Magento conference. You could argue that because my employer was behind the event, I should really go but I actually did want to get involved as Magento is becoming a very important part of my life […]

• Be more Frank

  25th August 2015

  Everyone must remember this guy right? You don’t want to do it like that, you want to do it like this! Well you would think that quote could have been said by most developers over the past ten years as we strive to find the best way of working and then telling people how awesome […]

• It’s fun to learn

  18th August 2015

  I’m a self taught developer. I didn’t go to college or university and have pretty much learnt all my skills at home. It’s not uncommon of course so I’m not some sort of hero. Most of what we do as web devs and designers is learnt from tinkering or making side projects and like so […]

• 18 days and counting

  14th August 2015

  18 days ago, I stopped using Twitter. Big deal I hear you say. Yes it was. You see, Twitter has been a huge influence on my life over the past few years. I’ve made friendships, lost friendships and maintained friendships. I’ve got work, helped others find work. I’ve laughed and cried in equal measures. It’s […]

• Here’s to the clever people

  21st July 2015

  Today, I was able to integrate Instagram and Twitter to my latest project. Ok, so not a massive deal you think but I only got it done thanks to some helpful people. People far more intelligent than I. Without these people, I probably would still be sat at my desk crying into my Nescafe. These […]

• Let’s talk about workflow

  14th July 2015

  Workflow is old hat apparently, we sorted it all back in 2014 but I can tell you now, I don’t think we have. I spent a lot of last year talking to a lot of people on iaskyouanswer about it and listening to a lot of people at conferences talk about it. The common thing […]

• Pay dem bills and relax

  8th July 2015

  The web industry/community/sector/business is a pretty unique place. Some good reasons and some bad. I don’t know many that cause so much discussion and generate so many side products. Side what? By side products, I’m talking books, conferences, blogs, magazines, podcasts, side projects, frameworks and even rapping. It seems there is always something new conjured […]

• Better CSS with Sass

  7th July 2015

  Cole Henley has written a book on Sass for Five Simple Steps, called Better CSS with Sass. Now I like Cole so decided to buy it because we’ve met a few times and we seem to get along. My Sass knowledge is pretty good but you never know what you might pick up so I […]

• UX’ers don’t kill websites, people do

  10th June 2015

  There seems to be a bit of disgruntlement in the camp. Websites are apparently boring and lack imagination due to excessive use of ‘UX’. What is UX? Well according to Wikipedia… User Experience (UX) involves a person’s behaviors, attitudes, and emotions about using a particular product, system or service. UX means different things to different […]

• WordPress Security

  4th June 2015

  Why are you using WordPress Dan? It’s shit Dan. Always being hacked. Use [insert popular CMS] They are right of course, it’s alway being hacked, or it seems to be. I guess with popularity though, it’s part of the territory. I’m pretty green with WordPress. I’ve been using it for a good few years now […]

• Getting fit with tech

  30th May 2015

  I’m not the world’s healthiest man. I’m lazy and eat too much bread and pasta. By no means do I eat a lot of junk food or processed meals but yeah, I’m not healthy. The problem for me with getting fit and losing weight is the being strict element. I can be really disciplined and […]

• Weekly Roundup: May 25 – 29

  29th May 2015

  Last week, I started a new thing where I rounded up stuff I had liked. Here we are with the second weekly roundup of blog posts and things that caught my eye but maybe not caught yours. Enjoy.. and if you want to add anything to the list, just shout next week. 22 Rules of […]

• Removing spam from Google analytics and your website

  23rd May 2015

  If like me, you check your Analytics a lot and see stuff like best-seo-offer.com and semalt.com on there, it get’s a bit annoying when you think how much it is polluting your stats. Granted, it’s only a personal site in my case but I’ve seen it with clients. So how do you stop it? Within […]

• Weekly roundup

  22nd May 2015

  I see a lot of stuff posted over the week and thought it would be nice to share incase people have missed it. I’ll try and do this weekly so if you see anything you’d like to share, drop us a line and I’ll be sure to mention it. Website optimisation Blurring your images might […]

• My website deconstructed

  21st May 2015

  I’ve recently redone my website.. Nobody cares Dan. No, I’m sure. I’m just wanting to talk about the process I went through as I changed direction a bit and really had a lot of fun…and learnt a it too. Design To begin, I really wanted to bring some character to the site, plus recently, I’d […]

• We’re all webcelebs

  20th May 2015

  I’ve not been home long and I spotted a blog post from a good friend Scott Parsloe where he talks about Web Celebs. I thought I would put into words what I think. Web celebs? Are you kidding? Scott talks about how some people think they are some form of celebrity when in reality they […]

• Ignorance in the web

  19th May 2015

  I’ve been doing this a while now this web thing. I’ve worked with people who had various levels of web knowledge but one thing that has been consistent over the years seems to be the odd statements and facts people come out with. Here’s a few hot topics. I’d love to hear your pearls. The […]

• The Net Awards

  17th May 2015

  It’s always a topic of discussion. Some love them, some loathe them. Do we really need such a thing, do we need more? It’s all up for grabs. Last year, I had a vested interest in them. I’d appeared on a podcast a couple of times that was up for Podcast of the year and […]

• Is your site mobile friendly?

  5th May 2015

  Recently, two weeks ago in fact, google announced some changes to their search algorithm for mobile phones. Put simply, if you have a non mobile friendly website, you are going to suffer in the rankings. If your site is responsive or at least mobile friendly, you are fine. And don’t worry, it won’t affect your […]

• Fast and furious websites

  24th April 2015

  I’ve recently redone my website. I wanted to try and strip a lot of stuff out of it as well as trying my hand at some new stuff like animations which I think I’ve pulled off alright. Along with all that, I wanted to make it as modern in terms of tech as I could […]

• Prototyping – It’s pretty important

  4th April 2015

  In my opinion of course… I got really into prototyping a year or so ago. I was using software rather than making HTML versions but I saw the value early on as we tried to plan. I eventually moved on to working with HTML prototypes to demonstrate ideas and a bit later on after that, […]

• So you want to design a responsive site

  24th March 2015

  …or build one. First off, I don’t mean to sound patronising. I’m not teaching people to suck eggs here, well I hope not but I do think it’s important to share wisdom, pass on that bit of advice you were once given. It’s giving back. Responsive web design is still new to many, it’s still […]

• Silent designer

  23rd March 2015

  We’ve all done it. You show your work to friends, colleagues, potential employers and clients. They pull a funny face and you can see they don’t like it. This is where the line “The design was nothing to do with me!” gets used. First thing people see is the design, they don’t care what went […]

• Automation rekindled my love affair

  14th February 2015

  Last year, I wrote about how automation was killing my love affair. At the time of writing, I was about to move jobs and hadn’t really been doing much Front End Development due to the switch to UX. Looking back at that period, I probably owe automation an apology. I was under the assumption that […]

• Photoshop and the world wide web

  12th November 2014

  I along with many others have felt that Photoshop was no longer the leading tool for web design for quite a while. Now this isn’t a typical I hate Photoshop blog post. It comes on the back of me reading Why we skip Photoshop by Jason Fried. The post really resonated with me and my […]

• I’m Dan and I’m not an expert

  22nd October 2014

  On the back of a good day at the office, I stood at Crewe station and thought about what me and the team had decided to do. The topic for today was workflow. It made me realise that I’ve been doing this for ten years now and I still don’t really feel like an expert. […]

• Make it memorable

  15th October 2014

  Recently, @Malarkey aka Andrew Clarke tweeted “Why are so few websites memorable? Could the reason be our current preoccupation with user experience? I believe it could be.” Now, I agree to a point to be fair, hopefully I’ll explain why. I never remember websites and the ones I tend to use are all about the […]

• Automation is killing my love affair

  2nd September 2014

  I’ve talked about this before and I expect I’ll get the same reaction as I did last time when it comes to the topic of tools and automation. For me, the thrill of the project is sculpting something out of HTML, CSS and JS. Getting deep down and dirty and watching something grow before me. […]

• Conference equality

  26th August 2014

  I told myself to not get involved. He did you know But here I am, about to embark on a writing journey about sexes and web. On a tuesday. I’ve not kept up with the latest talking point (maybe I should before I start blogging about it) but I kind of got the jist about […]

• Work / Life Balance

  10th June 2014

  I recently asked a few people a question about work / life balance and how they try to achieve it. I then put it out there to the world of social media. I always planned to follow it up with some sort of summary / blog post based on feedback from others who read and […]

• Ten years ago, I started a journey.

  7th June 2014

  June 2004 saw me land my first ever web design role. I’d been doing websites for a few years before as a hobby but this was to be my first proper job. I remember it well. I worked in a business centre where lots of small business were based. I worked at one place but […]

• For the sake of everyone else, say why

  24th May 2014

  A trend I see these days is people not liking a new site or thing but not really offering any reasons why. I’ve been thinking for a while now that isn’t really constructive for everyone reading or the industry itself. First off, the said owner of the site might be reading and wants to know […]

• jQuery UK

  17th May 2014

  I’ve finally got some time to talk about a conference I’ve just got back from. jQueryUK Conference in Oxford. A few months back, we saw the event advertised in the office and thought, it might be nice for some of us to go. At the time, I was a Front-End dev so it seemed a […]

• Treasure your colleagues

  19th April 2014

  I’ve wanted to touch on this topic for a good while now but this week kind of prompted me to get it done. It’s also my 100th blog post. I never knew I had it in me. It’s a pretty wishy washy topic but I make no apologies. Anyway, colleagues. 2 years ago, I was […]

• Responsive web design 50/50

  23rd March 2014

  Some days I love responsive web design and some days I hate it. It’s weird as up until I moved into the UX side of the company, I was all for it. Now though having spent a while looking at content heirarchy, what clients want and what I have to work with, I’ve realised that […]

• Impostor syndrome

  25th February 2014

  I’ve never really heard this much until just recently by two different people. I won’t name names but they are both freelancers I believe and two highly regarded people on social media circles. Also, two people I’ve met at least once. From what I understand, impostor syndrome is a belief that said person is not […]

• Cheap as chips

  17th February 2014

  I listened to Unfinished Business today where Andy Clarke talked about the Year of Code and it’s director Lottie Dexter with Elliott Kember. The show touched on the fact that some comments made by Lottie about easily learning code in a day could potentially harm what we do for a living and the expectations of […]

• PSDs killed the web design star

  14th February 2014

  Ok, maybe not killed but more hindered the web design star. I’ve thought about this for a long while going back a few years. I’ve touched on it before but it seems that it is still a problem worldwide. It’s entirely my own opinion and I’m up for thrashing it out and seeing how we […]

• I’m not being ruled by tools anymore

  8th February 2014

  Sass, Compass, Grunt, Jekyll, Cuthert, Dibble and Grubb. Tools are everywhere these days. All designed to make our job easier. I’m all for it. If something can reduce time taken, then that is a good tool. However, the concern for me is that we might be becoming a bit too hung up on tools. The […]

• Recognition

  4th February 2014

  The .Net award nominations have recently been released. A list of what many deem to be the best people at this moment on the internet. Yet, it seems not everyone buys into them or the list. Many see it as an ego trip or want of a better phrase a “wank fest”. Is it? An […]

• The Social Web

  27th January 2014

  Ok, this post is really just to get something down on paper just so I can start a ball of sorts rolling. I’ve wanted to be involved somehow with an event for a long while now and maybe this is the one? One of the things I hear a lot of around the time of […]

• Milton Keynes Geek Night All Dayer Conference

  26th January 2014

  Oh look, a write up for a conference. I totally didn’t plan to do one either but I got thinking. Following on from the little article I wrote for Everyday Designer (i’m allowed to plug on my own site, someone has to eh), I went to a conference in Milton Keynes a few days back. […]

• Waffling Welshman

  5th January 2014

  If you fancy listening to me mumble my way through a podcast, you can catch me on the Unfinished Business podcast with my good friend Andy Clarke. We talk about films, petrol strikes and doing things our own way. Thanks to Andy for the invite to do it. I actually really enjoyed chatting even if […]

• Be inspired

  24th November 2013

  As I’ve got older, I’ve been thinking of what I have achieved and what I have given back to the companies and individuals I have worked with whether they are clients or colleagues. It has made me think that before I jack it all in and retire to Cornwall, I’d like to think I’ve helped […]

• Are content management systems a waste of time?

  20th November 2013

  Ok, I know the answer to that question but play along for now. I recently asked on Twitter, Are CMS overused now and causing more hassle than good? Half the time, the client never uses it getting you to do the amends. I was expecting a few replies along the lines of “daft question” and […]

• Inbox Zero

  5th November 2013

  Inbox Zero or for some the Holy Grail. Me? It just means nobody has been in touch recently. I recently listened to Unfinished Business with guest Harry Roberts (great show by the way). The discussion… email and how much it gets in the way. Along with emails, notifications from various social media outlets like Twitter […]

• A bit late to the tablet party I guess

  4th November 2013

  I recently treated myself to a Nexus 7, well it was my birthday after all. I’m not really sure why I bought it. I’ve toyed with the idea of an iPad for ages now but something was stopping me. You’d think as a developer who works with responsive web design that it would be something […]

• Communication is key

  24th October 2013

  A big part of working on a project in a team whether it be 3 people or 13 is communication. You can have the best designers and devs working on something but if communication breaks down or is none existent from the start, that project is set to struggle often failing. As a front-ender, I’m […]

• Should I blog?

  22nd October 2013

  Today, a fellow twitterer Alex Jegtnes ‏aka @jegtnes tweeted this… At the risk of sounding really, utterly daft—am I the only person who’s avoided blogging because they’re ashamed at the state of their site? — Alex Jegtnes (@jegtnes) October 22, 2013 Taking the site design to the side for now, I think if you want […]

• 85% of work we do is rubbish

  12th October 2013

  Is the title link bait? Nah, I don’t think so. It’s what I believe. It’s what I say to lots of people I know who say that working in the web is the coolest thing ever and that they only ever work on cool stuff and that they love what they do and amazeballs and […]

• All grown up

  19th September 2013

  I wrote back in April about planning for the future and what I wanted to be doing in a few years time. A few months on and I’ve had a taste of leading, being the go to guy and generally being more involved and I have to say I loved it. It gave me a […]

• Stop, look and do something about it

  8th July 2013

  Web Celebs It’s a phrase I hear a lot and once upon a time, I felt the same way like so many do now. There are web designers who are put on pedastals, I agree that it happens. Often though it’s not their choice. Some, yeah love the attention but that’s human nature right? Everyone […]

• The Freelance Web

  6th June 2013

  Yesterday saw the launch of a new podcast aimed at the freelance market called The Freelance Web, hosted by Liz Elcoate and Sean Johnson. The show is in their own words, ‘A new weekly podcast for creative freelancers working on the web, discussing the everyday ups and downs of freelancing, plus web industry news, reviews […]

• unfinished.bz

  12th May 2013

  Just a quick post to mention that the iaskyouanswer site got a mention on the unfinished.bz podcast, episode 18 hosted by Andy Clarke and Anna Debenham this evening. If you havent listened before to the series of podcast’s I urge you to do so. It’s full of useful advice and information about business but done […]

• I Ask You Answer

  7th May 2013

  Just a quick one. I’ve finally resurrected the project I started 3 years ago and moved all the workflow interviews I did recently to there. The plan is to grow this a lot as I think a lot of people have a lot to say and also enjoy reading about others. So yeah, iaskyouanswer.co.uk is […]

• Responsive Design Weekly email

  3rd May 2013

  Just a quick note and thank you to both Responsive Design Weekly for featuring the workflow articles in their weekly round up and also a big thank you to those that have taken part. Some truly brilliant answers in there and some food for thought. Good news is that the series hasn’t ended, there will […]

• It’s a matter of workflow

  26th April 2013

  Something a bit different this time around. I’m taking a big interest in how people work. I find it interesting and educational. It also shows that there are many ways to work and we shouldn’t get hung up on whether we are doing it right or wrong. We’ve heard a lot about workflow, responsive web […]

• Planning for the future

  20th April 2013

  I’m 35 this year, I know, I know, I look so much younger but this year has made me realise that I’m not getting any younger and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I see myself doing in a few years. Recently I’ve taken an interest in how things are planned. Workflow has become […]

• You have a choice.

  5th April 2013

  A lot has been written about how we do things on the web. How we should do this, how we should do that. It would work better if we did it this way or it would be quicker if we did it that way. Browser led design is a hot topic and I think many […]

• We need to freshen it up

  22nd March 2013

  I think we need to freshen it up a bit. By that, I’d like to start reading what the lesser known people are doing. What problems they are facing, the tools they use, how they approach responsive web design, what they tell their clients and so on. Why? Because most of them go through the […]

• Goodbye 320 and Up, Hello Rock Hammer

  18th March 2013

  Today saw the launch of Andy Clarke’s new boilerplate Rock Hammer which replace the 320 and Up which so many used in their responsive web builds. Rock Hammer is a “curated project library for Hammer for Mac”, but also available for people not using Hammer. You can read about it here on Andy’s site or […]

• Is feedback a thing of the past?

  18th March 2013

  Ok, so link bait alert, well sort of. Been thinking of this a while now and have touched upon it a few times on Twitter but I wonder if giving feedback has become almost habit and meaning very little. Let me explain a bit more as I know a few will pull me up on […]

• Beefcheeks* in Brighton

  2nd March 2013

  Ok, so I’ve just got home from my first trip to Brighton and the Responsive Conference hosted by Jeremy Keith of Clearleft. I’d been to New Adventures back in January and felt nothing could better that conference but I have to say that ResponsiveConf has bettered it. I woke up after New Adventures, something stirred […]

• Browser led design or designing in the browser?

  26th January 2013

  Myself and some good friends were stood in the reception area waiting to get into the New Adventures conference when we got chatting about designing and building a website and we got onto talking about “designing in the browser”. We’d already talked about it on twitter so we knew the camp was divided. Myself, I’m […]

• New Adventures Conference 2013

  25th January 2013

  As we reflect on a great conference put on by the New Adventures team, I come back with some great memories, new ideas, some drive and lots of opinion. This year’s lineup was full of people that I knew little about so was quite open minded beforehand. The one speaker that I knew pretty well […]

• Mr Unsociable

  6th December 2012

  For a while now, I’ve been annoyed at how much internet “noise” is going on in my life. I’ve found myself getting wound up by constantly getting notifications from Facebook about meaningless photos and comments, wound up by the constant oneupmanship on Twitter and the wankfest that is dribbble. In short, I need to cut […]

• Bitten by the design bug again

  29th September 2012

  Aside from this website, I’ve not designed a website for close to two years. I made a decision back then to concentrate on just building the buggers which I think has paid off. It gave me focus, a goal if you will and still does. I remember getting a freelance gig whilst working in Chester […]

• I love my job

  18th September 2012

  It was 10.30pm last night. I was sat in the Chester services eating a Big Mac watching next week’s guests on Jeremy Kyle argue in the car park. I’d forgotten to get a straw and I had no clean clothes for tomorrow yet. I was tired and wanted to just lie down and sleep. I’d […]

• Is it better to be honest and realistic?

  8th September 2012

  I’m a realist, some say pessimist, I guess I’m both then. A few of my friends have recently gone freelance whereas I have taken the opposite step of going back to a 9-5 style role. Now, I enjoyed the freedom and the doing it when I wanted BUT I didn’t enjoy a lot of the […]

• Lorem ipsum

  2nd May 2012

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat […]

• Don’t be a div, use your devs

  3rd April 2012

  Something I have witnessed a lot of and to be honest, I have done for a few years now is account managers / project managers / tea ladies discussing briefs with designers talking about how it should look and how things function often resulting with the designer just nodding his head saying, “yeah we can […]

• Care in the community

  25th January 2012

  I’ve been doing web design now for nearly 10 years. Most of it was done from an office whilst working at a company. For 5 years, my web world was literally 10 people, all of whom worked at the same office. Then one day I joined Twitter. It took me a while to get into […]

• New Adventures 2012

  20th January 2012

  Not long got back from Nottingham and the New Adventures Web Conference which was put on by Simon Collison aka @colly. This was really my first big web conference. It was a chance to a) listen to some inspiring speakers and b) finally get to say hello face to face with people I’ve got to […]

• A matter of courtesy

  12th December 2011

  I’ve been thinking about talking about this for a while. It’s not a big deal as such but I think its one of the factors why there is at times a few bad things said about people. Communication. Is it me or are people just really bad at it? Twitter, emails, you name it. People […]

• Freelance – Love / Hate

  28th November 2011

  I saw a tweet today about how working freelance is the Holy Grail. This is how I feel about it. I’ve been freelance now for over a year. I love it and hate it at the same time. I’ve been lucky in that I have worked on some big projects so the need to be […]